Phumlani Pikoli (1988 – 11 April 2021) was a Zimbabwean-South African writer and multidisciplinary artist.
[2][3] His family moved back to South Africa when Pikoli was a young child, and eventually settled in Pretoria.
Pikoli wrote his first book, The Fatuous State of Severity, whilst recuperating from a depressive episode at a psychiatric clinic.
[6] Pikoli described the book as exploring "assimilation [and] colonial takeover" amongst the young black middle class in democratic South Africa.
He contributed to Carla Fonseca’s play The Same Pain at the Soweto Theatre.